Counting our chickens . . .

Friday

Mar 29, 2013 at 12:01 AMMar 29, 2013 at 2:24 PM

Jay Ashley / Times-News

In the days before I knew what the word “propitiation” meant in relation to Easter, or why a bunny brought me a basketful of candy on that Sunday when we got up before the sun did, I loved getting those little colored chicks from Roses 5 &10.

I’m talking real chicks, not little girls with curls and smiles who make you spend your allowance buying them candy or carrying their books to and from Glenhope Elementary School.

I’m not the only person here who fondly remembers going to downtown Burlington to gaze in wonder at the wire corrals where little colored chicks were on sale. They were huddled up under a heat lamp and peeping away — blue ones, green ones, pink ones — a rainbow of colors on these fluffy little creatures.

At Roses, there was a kindly teenage girl who would help you pick out a chick or baby duck. She’s still around. She believes the store also sold rabbits, although she admits her memory may not be up to snuff on that commodity. That woman’s name back then was Frances Oakley. Today her name is Frances Woody. Maybe you’ve heard of her. She gave up new chicks for newspaper columns.

Also kept under heat lamps at Roses were all manner of hot roasted nuts, including the Spanish kind with loose husks that got caught in the back of my throat, hak-kaff. Hmm boy. That really has nothing to do with this column, but everything to do with the fact that it’s close to snack time while I’m writing this.

The chicks were hard to ignore. They peeped all the time. They didn’t let up. And they also had their own unique odor. It was the mixture of sawdust and natural aromas, not exactly objectionable but neither was it the kind of essence you’d want to smell year-round in an enclosed store or behind your girlfriend’s ear.

To a kid, the peeping translated to, “Buy us, buy us. Take us home, take us home.” What they didn’t peep was, “Most of us won’t live long enough to learn tricks or become your Sunday dinner when the preacher comes over.”

Yes, the death of these frail creatures was not surprising and was, in fact, expected. That’s just the cold, hard truth about those days when dinosaurs ruled the earth, barbarians gathered at the gates of our city and government agencies had not been invented to rule every aspect of our life.

The chick memories were aroused this week when Miz Nancy slid a Tractor Supply Co. advertising circular across the breakfast table to me.

“I’d like to get some chickens,” she announced, pointing to some pictures of pullets and bantams caught in repose on the front page of that newspaper insert.

She launched into her version of our dotage, surrounded by chickens gently clucking in the yard (the chickens clucking, not us) and providing us with eggs daily. Her ammo was the fond memories of the prize chickens her mother, Miz Vee, raised on their farm in Polk County.

“But I can’t eat eggs that much anymore,” I interjected, pointing to the refrigerator where magnets hold about a dozen appointment cards from all the doctors for whom I make Mercedes payments on a regular basis.

But she ignored me. She was on a roll.

I know she saw herself loading scratch feed into her favorite outdoor apron and walking around the estate, conversing with the Cornish Rocks, bantering with the bantams and palavering with the pullets. She could wear a bonnet, like a character from a Beatrix Potter book, with rabbits and squirrels and other furry and feathered creatures following her shadow at the daily feeding, sharing nature’s wisdom in peace and harmony. Some sort of hippie-chicken commune.

I applauded her vision, her Mother Earth urges, but I’m the one who had to break out the baseball bat of reality.

“We can’t have chickens,” I announced, quickly reminding her it was not my decision but one made by the city council a few years ago. Randy roosters who insisted on crowing in constant 24-hour shifts led to complaints by neighbors to city hall which led the city-boy council to spell the doom for the poultry population. Of course, the fact that the avian flu was in the news around that time provided a built-in political excuse. Thus, the wanna-be casual gentle chicken farmers who wanted to keep flocks in town were given no choice but to divest or move away outside the city limits. I doubt the city population fluctuated a fraction of a percentage, an iota or a jot from that momentous decision.

“But they lay eggs,” Miz Nancy continued to beat the dead horse — or dead dominicker in this instance — “and you can eat them. It’s a win-win.”

When she gets like this, I can only nod my head in agreement and advise her to cast her next vote for the council candidate who comes out with a platform to repeal the city poultry laws. Then, and only then, will I consent to build a coop, stretch fencing and lay in a supply of pecking pellets.

And with my proclivity to avoid hard work, you can safely bet I will not be that candidate.

Jay Ashley is managing editor of the Times-News. He fluffs his feathers at jashley@thetimesnews.com

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